Tara Bursey's "The End" is a series of two dimensional mixed media collages that combine the conventions of mid-20th century end title cards with dried foods such as barley, rice and seeds as surprising drawing materials. Drawing on concerns about the effect of global warming on food production and our collective inclination to mark epochs, The End is simultaneously a celebration of mid-century design and a meditation on loss.

Cuban-American contemporary artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada created this amazing aerial land artwork in Amsterdam for the campaign Vogelvrije Women - Defend women who defend human rights!. Together with 80 volunteers from all over the Netherlands, the Cuban-American artist created a portrait of an anonymous Mesoamerican woman spanning the length of two football fields in honor of female activists and as a protest against their persecution in the Mesoamerican region.

Israeli artist Nirit Levav creates life-size dog sculptures made entirely from bicycle parts such as chains, gears and pedals. The choice came from a visit to a bike shop in The Netherlands, where cycling is very popular and common. Via her website, "The chains have proven to be a wonderful compound to work with, encompassing both her love for metals as well her enthusiasm in getting to know the hidden flexibility and tenderness of the chains combined with the versitile range of movement they possess."

Dear readers, it's that time of the year when we step away from our computers to celebrate the holidays. It’s been a great three years since we launched this blog, and while things will slow down a little bit over the next few days, we can't wait to share all of our plans with you in the new year. In the meantime, peruse through the Junkculture archives, and of course...Happy Holidays!

Shooting from a paraglider, photographer Marek Samojeden takes spectacular aerial landscape shots of southern Poland in winter. From above, the white snow becomes a blank canvas that allows the viewer to see the world as art. Objects and texture in the snow become patterns creating repetition, shape and form.

What happens when you attach Christmas lights to a ceiling fan? Answer, a dazzling display of spinning lights. Redditor CycleNinja posted these beautiful images that were created with battery powered LEDs and some nifty camera work. CycleNinja explains how the project was created, "I simply looped the strings around the brackets that hold the blades. I played around with the lengths. Make sure the loops are not hanging down too far, or they will fling out way too far and could tear the room apart. It didn't look very fancy with the room's lights on."

Artist Jared Clark uses his face and mouth to prop up multi-color Sharpies and let hem bleed onto the paper creating beautiful compositions of colored dots and lines. The result is a series of chaotic drawings that are as much about mark-making as they are performance. Jared says of his work, "The series came naturally from this idea of filming the bleed images of markers – and using physical limitations as a way of keeping the image pure. Once the physical limitation ideas took the forefront, I turned the camera from the paper to myself and a path into performance was born."

"Scotch Tape" is an ongoing series of portraits by New Mexico-based photographer Wes Naman in which he uses clear adhesive tape to completely cover and distort people's faces into hilarious caricatures of themselves. Commercial photographer by day, Naman is always looking for ways to challenge himself creatively. He says, “What I’m ultimately aiming for with my work is to create a catalyst to help people see the world a little differently.”

"Landfill Harmonic" is an upcoming feature-length documentary by Juliana Penaranda-Loftus & Alejandra Nash, about a remarkable orchestra from a remote village in Paraguay, where its young musicians play with instruments made from trash. The film shows how trash and recycled materials can be transformed into beautiful sounding musical instruments, but more importantly, it brings witness to the transformation of precious human beings.

British Institute of Radiology artist-in-residence Hugh Turvey creates images with x-rays to reveal the hidden contents of wrapped presents. The images, which he calls Xograms, are made by exposing each object to photons for up to a minute in an x-ray machine. Speaking about the project Hugh says, "I have been working with x-ray for over 20 years and never get tired of seeing things I shouldn’t. When I put on what I call my x-ray specs and I take a peek I always wonder whether someone tried to hide the identity of a present by packing it in a different shape box. I guess the only challenge will be looking surprised on Christmas day when I’m opening my presents.

Our most popular posts this week featured simple math additions inspired by the visual problem "one plus one equals window", an impressive Christmas tree made of 5,000 old plates and cups, an installation consisting of 20,000 toys made in China and a series of sculptural cubes made from pennies.

A while back we featured Yusuke Oono's amazing laser cut book that opens out to reveal a beautiful three-dimensional diorama. His latest creation is an equally stunning Christmas version of the same concept, "expressing scenes from a story in a three-dimensional way using the pages of a book".

Michael Wolf's "The Real Toy Story" is an elaborate installation consisting of 20,000 toys made in China and purchased in California that Wolf attached to the walls of a gallery, along with photographs of workers making the toys in Chinese factories. The installation is a homage to China's factory workers who slave away to produce most of the world's plastic toys in unsafe factories and under exploitative conditions.

Artist Erwan Soyer creates striking textural collages using photographs and pages from old books. Soyer's collages are made entirely by hand, without digital intervention. He explicitly mentions Surrealism as a main source of inspiration, and his work revolves around notions of territory, dreams and mythology. In his latest series of works climbers and explorers travel on expeditions across the pages of discarded books in search of adventurous spaces for the imagination.

Using waste and recycled paper as the photographic subject, Spanish photographer Gonzalo Sanguinetti has created a spectacular series of images that document the paper recycling processes. The photographs bring together different textures and colors transforming ordinary paper scrap into fascinating abstractions.

For his graduation project titled "STYN", Netherlands-based graduate student Sam van Doorn deconstructed a pinball machine and reconstructed it as a design tool. A poster is placed on top of the machine, which has a grid printed on it. Based on this grid you can structure your playing field to your desire. By playing the machine the balls create an unpredictable pattern, dependent on the interaction between the user and the machine. The better you are as a player, the better the poster that you create.

In collaboration with local residents the city of Hasselt in Belgium, Inge Vanluyd and Stefan Vanbergen of creative agency Mooz have designed an impressive Christmas tree made of 5,000 old plates and cups. Speaking about the project Inge Vanluyd and Stefan Vanbergen said, "At home we all have odd plates and cups which just don’t go with anything and as a consequence never find their way out of the cupboard. We noticed that friends and family also had ‘spare’ plates hanging around the house. This was enough to get us thinking about a creative destination for these everyday objects. That’s how we ended up with a porcelain Christmas tree. We decorated the tree with objects which would otherwise have remained invisible"

As part of international street art festival Nuart, New York-based artist Aakash Nihalani created simple math additions by cleverly incorporating the windows and facades of buildings into his distinctive trompe l’oeil 3-D boxes. The result is a series of humorous artworks that draw inspiration from the simple visual problem one plus one equals window.

Artist Robert Wechsler creates amazing sculptural cubes by joining pennies in perfect orientation to one another. Joined at perpendicular angles, the coins create a lattice structure allowing tunnel like passages of light from certain angles. Robert says of his work, "I like working with pennies because they are so familiar. People are comfortable around the sculptures because they are made out of pennies, it'something they can relate to, it's something that they've seen their whole life."

Our most popular posts this week featured flocks of birds carved out of natural feathers, five hours of plane landings captured in thirty seconds, everyday household objects transformed into beautiful sea creatures and upside-down self portraits by british photographer Caulton Morris.

"Repair is Beautiful" by Brazilian designer Paulo Goldstein focuses on repairing broken objects from a craftsperson’s eye. The project began with the idea of solving frustration. A broken object delivers frustration because it doesn’t achieve its functionality. Paulo explains, "The project aims to give back this feeling of control – by scaling down a major society problem to a human size and projecting frustration upon broken objects that can be repaired through design and craftsmanship. The final outcome is a collection of intriguingly repaired objects imbued with new meaning and functionality. "

Artist Dan Bradica create photographs of temporary sculptures made from paper and other materials in managed forest preserves. Each sculptural form takes a shape complementary to its surroundings appearing in contrast to a depiction of the landscape that acknowledges the maintenance and control of civic land. Dan says of his work, "This project is a result of a personal desire for an idyllic wilderness within reach of my Midwestern home. With this work, I explore contained and illusive spaces that are shaped by their geographic location, yet appear separated from their immediate surroundings. This work attempts to examine our perceptions and interpretations of nature, further investigating our place within the ecosystem."

Need a cozy balcony with a nice view? No problem, French artist Julien Berthier has the perfect solution for you. "Balcon Additionnel" is an architectural intervention that places a temporary Haussmannian-style balcony made from plastic resin, steel and paint on the facade of any building. The balcony is hoisted up to the building from a boom-truck on the ground and can be transported to different locations around the city.

UK-based photographer Caulton Morris precariously balances on his head in the most unexpected places. "Upside" is a series of playful photos based on self-timer challenge - Caulton gives himself ten seconds to try and balance on his head before his camera goes off. What you see in the final images is completely real, Caulton doesn't use Photoshop manipulation or any other computer tricks to capture these surreal moments.

Inspired by this composite photo created by Ho-Yeol Ryu, photography and film professor Cy Kuckenbaker created this remarkable time-lapse capturing every landing at San Diego International Airport over a five hour period from 10:30am through 3pm. Kuckenbaker explains how his project came about and how it was created: "I moved to a new neighborhood in San Diego a little over a year ago that put me close to the San Diego Int. Airport. Since then I have become increasingly interested in the rhythms of the airport and the airplanes themselves. San Diego has an unusual flight path that brings the planes in low right over the center of the city and they have to drop rapidly behind a hill to make the runway. When I saw a composite still image on PetaPixel of every airplane that took off in a day from a European airport I started to wonder if I could do something similar with video.

Washington-based artist Chris Maynard uses the forms and patterns of feathers to create intricate cutouts of large flocks of birds. Using fine eye surgery forceps, scalpels, and magnifiers, Chris carefully cuts and arranges the feathers guiding each piece to honor something about the feather and bird that grew it. Maynard says of his work: "Feathers are structural wonders, serving many functions. they also suggest important universal themes. feathers are my medium. They are an ultimate achievement of nature and a pinnacle of wonder. After feathers perform their functions on birds, they are molted yearly but keep their beauty and complexity. I want to show feathers in a different light, off the bird."

Swiss/Danish artist group PutPut created a series of hybrid objects that combine practicality with style. The "Vessels" series highlights a meeting between two object worlds where each tries to accommodate the other. The misplacement of practical plastic lids on decorative objects amplifies a juxtaposition in materiality and use. These objects exemplify a strenuous exercise in collecting and finding objects without an obvious connection that fit together.

Inspired by the mass of plastic debris floating in the oceans around the world, Australia-based photographer Kim Preston has transformed everyday household objects into beautiful sea creatures. The series titled "Plastic Pacific" explores the devastating environmental and health impact of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems.